Cicatrix
by SorainaSkye
Summary: This reminds me you're alive. This reminds me you could have died.


Hey, guys. I know, it's been ages since I wrote FMA fic. I'd really like to get back into the swing of things, so that I'm not just working on Spirit's Cry. I have so many really awesome ideas that I'd love to get down, so hopefully I'll start posting more soon.

This was written for "Bite Sized Bits of Fic" on Livejournal for evil-little-dog. Prompt: FMA, Ed/Winry, "It may sound absurd, but don't be naive, even heroes have the right to bleed."

The title, "Cicatrix" is "the new tissue that forms over a wound and becomes a scar". Anyway, I really love this idea that all three of these guys have all kinds of different scars, from different things.

This hasn't been betaed due to the short length. Please review, and enjoy!

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When Ed is five, he falls out of a tree. He doesn't break anything - mom and Winry and Al tease him about being hard-headed - but he does get a nasty gash on his scalp that doesn't stop bleeding for hours. _Head wounds always bleed a lot,_ Winry's parents tell him while they're fixing it up. He's not used to the sight of it yet, all that red, so they assure him that sometimes people bleed and its okay, because most of the time they can heal.

Auntie and Uncle Rockbell are right. It stops bleeding. But even years later he can feel under his hair and find the scar.

When he's seven, Winry cuts the back of her knee on a rock in the creek. The blood billows around her in the water, surrounding her, and it's so deep that she needs stitches. It leaves a jagged lightning bolt scar, and later the feeling of it under his fingers will become familiar to him.

Al, predictably, avoids the majority of scars until they start training with Izumi. Ed and Winry more than make up for it; between schoolyard fights with bullies and regular playground accidents, the two of them spend a fair part of their childhood bleeding.

(One year Tommy Martin breaks Winry's nose after she started yelling at him for being mean to a younger kid. It bleeds, all down her favorite blue dress, and Winry cries for days because it was one of the last gifts her parents gave her).

After Mom dies, they're less prone to playing, less prone to fights. They leave to train with Izumi, and gain more scars there (Ed remembers: one of Al's goes across his thumb, from cutting himself with the knife when they were on the island). They're gone, and then when they come back to Resembool they focus so much on their transmutation that there are several scars Winry has that he doesn't recognize. They're from cutting herself with tools mostly while working, and they pepper her hands and part of her arms in rough calluses.

There are other scars, of course. Around his shoulder, from when his arm had been gone, severed so perfectly it could have been done by a doctor. His leg, just above his knee. Al, of course, has no scars after this, not for a long time.

There's more. A damn cut on his head that keeps reopening. Lines across his chest and arms ( _It looks like you were attacked with a sword!_ Winry says, like it's ridiculous, and he can't help but laugh out loud when he tells her that he was).

Every time they see each other, they have more scars. Winry's eyes linger on his, tight with worry, and he pretends not to notice, pretends that it doesn't effect him when really its one of the things he hates most in the world. His scars are from fighting, but hers are from giving life, now.

Later, after The Promised Day and he has even more (a round one, now, in his left arm. a big one through his stomach that leaves his skin there a little bit darker), he shows them to her, to Al. Tells them everything. He knows that Al feels guilty, somehow, for these scars, as if maybe they could have shared them so Ed would have less, but Al's body had been destroyed time and time again for Ed's sake, and he's grateful that it kept his brother alive.

Winry cries, just a little.

Even later still, when he's stopped being an idiot and told her how he feels, is the first time they really get to see all of them on each other.

They are a patchwork quilt of scars.

They touch them, run their fingers over the other's arms, back, legs, sometimes making the other squirm at ticklish sensations. They trace the lines. _This reminds me you're alive. This reminds me you could have died._

His body paid the price for his sin, but hers grew stronger with her work.

If he looks closely, and they line themselves up right, it almost looks like some of their scars connect across their bodies. He likes that idea.

Each new one is hard, but together, it's a little easier.


End file.
